Thursday, 18 December 2014

Enlisting against evil

Today I shall call at the Pakistan High Commission somewhere behind Harrods to sign the Book of Condolence. In recent years we have seen so many children dead from our wars that the number of this particular incident fades against those killed in Iraq from car bombs, or in Afghanistan from western drones, or hacked to death as part of the Sudanese oil war. There are two reasons why this latest event is an outrage against civilisation - the first, that the children were the sole targets of the hell-bound spawn rather than merely collateral casualties and secondly that they represent every facet of civilisation so hated by the evil ones. Peshawar is a British army garrison town frozen in the 1950s - think Colchester. The pink sandstone church is in the perpendicular style, the golf course is there, as is a garrison swimming pool and athletics track, and an area assigned as officers' quarters. Or colony, as the Pakistan army now has it. And of course a garrison school, its uniform little changed from the days in which scions of Indian Army officers scratched their names in the brick. This is the Pakistan that has custody of the Nukes, that sends its offspring to universities in the UK and its subalterns to Sandhurst.

The other Pakistan is a place of dirt-poor villages, rape, incestuous marriages, imams who can neither read nor write, where disabled children born from inbreeding are quietly killed, a place of debt and servitude, of grinding poverty, ignorance and hatred, a place in which twelve year-olds can field-strip an AK74. This is the Pakistan of primitive Islam, of superstition and unenlightened bigotry. Any school teaching more than rote-learning of the Koran is haram. No wonder they shot Malala. No wonder they hate and loathe everything that the Peshawar Public School represents.

There is more than one war embracing the globe. Whilst the Islamic civil war plays out, there is also the war of primitivism against civilisation, typified by those evil spawn of hell in Pakistan, and by Boku Haram in Nigeria. There is no accommodation with such people; they must be destroyed, like smallpox.

And every name written in the Books of Condolence at Pakistani embassies and high commissions across the world is a warrior in the fight of civilisation against the evil darkness.

DD999Islam doesn't seem able to live at peace with anyone - even its own adherents.You still don't get it do you?Christianity is exactly like this, as is "marxism" in case you hadn't noticed.It is one of the prime characteristics of religions that "heretics" are worse than "unbelievers" & should be treated worse.

The other give-away, of course is their fundamental hatred of women's education ... did you hear the bit about one famale teacher at that school - they burst in: she realised & said "You're not having my kids", so they poured petrol over her & lit off ....then tried to kill all the children.EUW.Time for "Magdeburg surrender" I think.

"Christianity is exactly like this, as is "marxism" in case you hadn't noticed.It is one of the prime characteristics of religions that "heretics" are worse than "unbelievers" & should be treated worse."Christians tend to tut-tut a lot and pray for people to see the light, they do not torch people nor machine gun school children.I never give an opinion on ballet or flower arranging as I know nothing of these matters and can't be bothered to research them, perhaps you should not talk of religions.

There's an 80:20 (Sunni-Shia) thing going on in Pakistan (+ a veritable carnival of exotic Islamic sects...) and the Wahabists of The Peninsula have been tipping poison into the country since the 1970s.

I'd say it is not unreasonable to link this attack to the ISIS stuff going on further west - which actually makes this episode more understandable and rather less "shockingly random" than it's afaics been portrayed in the LMSM esp the BBC who aren't going anywhere near what might have motivated the nutters.

When Pakistan was formed - the Brits left and locals took over the colonial infrastructure - essentially unchanged. There's been some meddling with the Islamic constitution etc. - but the "Establishment" class look after themselves, pay almost no tax and corruption is the norm.

Then there's the Balouch issue, Kashmir, the Mohajirs, the drug business, foreign aid - the place is an absolute powder keg - and more outrages are pretty much guaranteed.

Gordon/FPT: What you write is correct - independence was rushed through so that Attlee's Government would get some "gold stars" on their end-of-term report. Mountbatten, known as a "yes-man" was appointed to hurry things along and turn a Nelsonian eye to any little difficulty - like the 300,000 subsequent deaths. How could anyone who knew anything of the history, suggest that what were East and West Pakistan should be one nation?

"Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression ..." [V I Lenin}."Man makes religion ..." and "Religion ... is the opium of the people" [Karl Marx].Even Richard Dawkins accepts that Stalin was atheist.

So it is perfectly possible, though not axiomatic, that atheists can brutal, cruel, sadistic, and murderous. Alongside those who do the same things and claim to be religious.

All very fine, not much to disagree with, except I wonder what "the warrior in the fight of civilisation against the evil darkness" will say when the Pakistani military-a very professional and efficient force-eventually capture the attackers and apply their usual methods of interrogation?

The ISI are always involved it would seem in money, politics, religion and drugs in Pakistan - having cultivated the Taliban for nefarious purposes they have historically kept them on a fairly short leash and don't always see eye to eye with the mainstream military.

"Taliban" is a quite generic term - I'll be interested to see who's pulling these guys strings. Hamid Gul would be able to say what's going on....

Pakistan has a blood soaked political history and that isn't going to change anytime soon.

Nice point Haddock and I guess you know your history and history is all it is, people as a rule don't murder en masse repeatedly for other religions.I agree with this post but the arguments here in the past against the west (America)using all means to defeat these maniacs make the case for wiping them out somewhat of a problem.

It's a mess, a geographical and demographic mulch bounded by Karakoram mountains in the north and the Balochi ridge and sea to the south.A country incised thus influenced and as a highway by the Indus river valley. Other than that it was a catch all and a idea of somehow drawing a division of the subcontinent [India-Pakistan east and west] but the fact of it - east or west - there is no real border. Pashtuns meld into Afghanistan and Punjab is in India too and the whole lot was part of the greater Iranian Empire with heavy influence still - from that part of the world.

A vast [190m] population and ever growing - no birth control in the Islamic way of things but western medicine means most kids survive now. Plus, all these people who are as poor as church mice....well most of them are. Poverty, hopelessness, a political inertia and religious fanaticism..... all of this provides a febrile recruitment area for the Wahhabist nutters sent over into Karachi and from Medina.

One thing they do understand these fanatical preachers, a little education is very bad, so they send out the cannon fodder to do the dirty deeds.Education, it makes the faithful question and questions are not what Wahhabists like to hear, all that they demand is fealty, and blind obedience on pain of death if you slightly step over the boundaries. Purblind and absolute - Theocracy, is the word I'm seeking.

Bombing school kids is in the design and if you ain't a Sunni Muslim you ain't a person anyway. Therefore all [the Kuffar] humanity is the enemy of these freaks and most of these fundo's don't regard Pakistan as their "family" unless you kowtow.

A final problem is, Pakistan is to say the very least, rather ambiguous with Wahhabism and zealots and in Pakistan dependent of tribal loyalties, family and alliances, at any time whose side anybody is on is very much open to question - because like the wind changes direction so do peoples and alliances and this applies to the military as it does to the intelligence services and government and all the time in the background are India, China, and Iran.

As I said, what a mess it all is! The big problem for us in Britain - they'll bring it, they have brought it - over here.

At the time of the war which created Bangladesh out of East Pakistan, I visited my uncle by marriage who had retired as a lieutenant colonel from the British Indian Army in the Thirties. He want on to become a vicar in the Church of England.

The television was on reporting the war and he made several remarks such as " frightful area that. Never take any recruits from there". There were interviews with senior officers of both armies and I suddenly realised that they spoke exactly the same sort of English as my uncle the vicar - speaking clearly and slowly with a rather old fashioned turn of phrase.An Indian, General Manekshaw ( later a Fiel Marshal) was brushing off a persistent questioner from the BBC." My dear fellow" he said " I am sure the BBC is already well informed and cracking good luck to you!"

The likes of Cascadian and Thud seem unable to grasp the (actually not that complicated) concept that it is possible to win a war without sinking to the level of institutionalised brutality (towards prisoners, women and children etc).

Of course war itself is little more than organised brutality, which is why the halfwit in chief Bush and his loathsome poodle Blair were so wrong to declare a war on terror.

I strongly suspect we are still reaping the whirlwind sown by those fucking idiots and their disgusting corrupt coterie of arms makers and service providers.

Much more recently I heard a radio interview with the Pakistani General commanding in Swat valley where there is a great deal of trouble from Jihadists and the like.

He had a more noticeable Indo-Pak accent than the officers I mentioned earlier but said. "These fellows start out very poor, robbing the rich until they become rich themselves. So the whole of Swat valley is like Sherwood Forest and I am the Sheriff of Nottingham".

Bloke .."that it is possible to win a war without sinking to the level of institutionalised brutality (towards prisoners, women and children etc)."

I think maybe your ire would be better directed towards the jihadists, but since like your appeasement-minded politicians and generals you insist on restricting the forces that are presumably fighting to preserve your freedoms, let me say.

There is little to no "institutionalised brutality" practised by the allied forces. Isolated incidents, certainly, almost too few to register, but certainly fodder for execrable lawyers and politicians. I wonder if you realise that you have become a useful idiot in the cause for jihadist support.

Perhaps if you are so concerned about unwarranted suffering you could find time to criticize obambi's indiscriminate killing by drones, which camoron of course enthusiastically endorses and the RAF enthusiastically implements. Many innocent children and wives have been "attritional casualties". If you are as moral as you pretend to be you should be outraged.

Cascadian - what was the rendtion programme and guantanamo bay if not intitutionalised brutality towards prisoners?

Fucking idiot. By the way I ahve enormous ore for jihadist, I absolutely hate the bastards, for the principle reason that they are brutal and uncivilised and totally the opposite of everything that I admire; and that is why I get angry when I see my own side (the UK and USA) committing stupid and unnecessary acts of brutality which blur the line between fundamentally good and fundamentally evil.

We obviously differ in opinion, if you wish to be blindly ignorant of the brutal but necessary realities of war that is your prerogative, but appeasers should not guide the prosecution of that war. Our forces already suffer under a welter of rules of engagement, further restricting their effectiveness is not desirable.

I note that previous comments related to the SAS deeming "torture" (I might define it as rough-handling) as necessary and important remains unanswered.

On another topic, it seems to me that the appeasers are very selective in their criticism. Every day we hear further examples of what is real torture in the NHS, usually directed at the weakest and least able to complain- dementia patients. This of course elicits no outcry. People are dying, food and water is being withheld, perhaps you could mount your prancing pony and hoist your white flag and head off into battle?

Anyway, I'm done. You can have the last comment, swear away it always enhances your diatribe.

I confess I only skimmed the article, five pages to make one simple point perhaps defines the problem of contemporary university education, but nevertheless good for the author for attempting to counter the almost universal positions adopted by most students.

As to your simple concept, I would prefer to call it a selective concept. Innocent people are killed in wars (particularly by drones) and in the NHS all the time, with minor outrage. The fact that a politically inspired report revealing one death could stir up so much ill-will tells me (at least) that the public are being used as useful idiots against their larger interests to defeat the jihadists. In the larger context I thoroughly dislike how the politicians self-serving interests are used to keep handing the enemy propaganda victories-I believe that is the simple concept you think I have missed.

I just do not believe you can argue for moral purity in the "torture" case and ignore the other examples. I particularly dislike the the overtones that Europe is somehow ethically superior to the USA in this affair.

CascadianInnocent people are killed in wars (particularly by drones) Not even wrong - the use of drones significantly reduces the number of innocent bystanders killed, actually.Did you know that drone HQ's have embedded lawyers, these days?

Rather than have a very expensive fighter-bomber, burning up fuel at ridiculous rates, firing off when it is close to running out of fuel, & dropping bombs on village, a drone can now stooge for hours & wait until $_MUSLIM_NUTTER'S pick-up truck has left the village, is on an empty road & then blow him away.

Where is the outrage? And is it not strange that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at City University, London can do such a detailed analysis of US drone activity but totally ignore the RAF Waddington chappies that Raedwald was praising effusively recently? More selective Euro- weenie outrage.